Promentory
by Eirina
Summary: 'Go jump off a cliff, Granger.' Draco says. So she does.


**A/N Just a one-shot I wrote while I was proofing the second chapter of He's Breaking, She's Broken, and finishing the third of Quiet Fire. Both will be updated in a few days, promise.**

**DISCLAIMER- Don't own it, so don't sue me for fangirling over DMHG.**

Hermione wakes up to an empty bed, with sheets still sticky and pillows still dented. She puts her head against the bed again and smells him. She can feel him all over her. It's a nice feeling, but the loneliness of the whole thing ruins the moment.

"Draco?" She sits up, clutching the sheet to her naked chest. Why bother looking for him when she knows he'll never be here when she wakes up?

Ron yells at her again today. He doesn't understand her anymore he says.

When her two best friends first came back from battle she had been excited, contagiously happy. Now all she feels is dread, because she knows every time they walk through the front door of the Weasley's Burrow they'll ignore her and keep walking. Because they'll always find her with him… They don't understand. They don't realize Draco is the only thing that she has no control over, and that's comforting. It takes the stress off her shoulders with him, when he holds her at night.

He's never kissed her in the day before. But she wants to.

While he's sitting on the kitchen counter, with Molly and Ginny trying to disinfect the many long cuts along his chest (she's never been very good at handling blood) Hermione stares at him with a new awareness. She needs him, all the time, every day and every minute of it. It's getting harder to breathe in here; so many disgusted faces look at her now, as if she was sleeping with the enemy. But she wasn't. They were all on the same side now, even if, for the most part, Draco didn't like admitting it.

When he's clean and sterile she places a hand over one white bandage. He doesn't look up.

"Are you alright?" She asks.

He shrugs off her hand "I'm fine Granger."

That night he breaks down while he's making love to her. She does nothing for hours except hold him. Eventually he manages to give her just one sentence that makes it all make sense.

"They're using my mother."

Hermione doesn't know how to handle him like this. She's never seen Draco crumble like this before. So she cries with him. She cries silently for everyone that's died. Fred, Luna, Fleur, even Lavender Brown. She can feel his tears running down her neck. They stay this way until the sun starts rising, then he makes love to her again, and she stops feeling anything except bliss.

She wakes up to an empty bed in the morning.

"Can't you help him?"

"How are we supposed to get someone out of the manor when we can barely get anyone in?" Harry snaps at her.

She knows that, but she has to ask anyway.

"Please, Harry!" She grips his hand "He's going to lose concentration, I can feel it. And you know how easy it is to make a mistake out there."

Ron walks into the kitchen. He doesn't greet her.

"Poor Hermione, so worried her traitor boyfriend will get what he deserves."

She doesn't say anything back. She can see Ron's hurt. Hermione knows she hurt him. But she can't take that back now.

Later, when Draco comes in to meet with Harry, Ron glares at him fiercely.

"Problem, Weasley?" He raises an eyebrow at Weasley.

"Yes, actually," Ron replies "Your girlfriend wants us to risk our lives to save your mother."

Draco goes pale "She told you?"

Harry nods "We'll try to help, Malfoy."

But Draco walks out the door anyway.

"You had no fucking right!"

Hermione squeezes her eyes shut "I had to-"

"You didn't have to do a single fucking thing, Granger! The last thing I want is your bloody friends' pity."

"Draco please, you don't understand!" She grabs tries to hug him but he pulls away from her. "I want to help you. I love you. Don't you see?"

He shoves her away from him "Well I fucking hate you."

"You don't mean that."

"Oh but I do. You're nothing but a filthy little mudblood who sticks her nose into everything I do. Do me a favour and get out of my life- in fact, do us all a favour and go jump off a cliff. You have no one now."

When he slams the door Hermione knows he's right. He does hate her, and she has absolutely no one left to love her now.

She's wrong about him. Even with all the things going on in his head he still doesn't get himself killed.

But Ron does. When they carry him inside she knows it's her fault. She was so worried about Draco that she forgot she was hurting Ron as well. She was driving him crazy. Now he's dead.

She knows they all blame her, too. Even Harry. They think it's her fault he wasn't concentrating. She thinks it's her fault too.

That's why she can't stay in this house anymore. So Hermione leaves, she just walks out the door, without anyone noticing.

She knows where she's going. It's a steep climb but she makes it. Her knees are scraped from clambering up the rocky mountain pass, but she ignores the blood and keeps on going.

It's beautiful at the top. She can see every tree top from here, even the roof of the Burrow.

Hermione looks down the gorge at the expanse of rock. It's high and for a moment she becomes dizzy and has to blink several times to steady her head.

There's a cool wind blowing from the South. It lifts the hem of her dress and tickles her legs. She listens to it whining and wheezing past her ears. She wonders where it's going, if it will blow across the lilies on Ron's grave, if it will cause havoc as Molly hangs up washing. Maybe it will caress Draco's face as he prepares to leave for the Malfoy Manor again and begin anew his charade as a Deatheater. She hopes it does. Then some part of her will go along with him.

She takes a deep breath, lifts her arms up and lets her body go loose.

'Go jump off a cliff, Granger.' Draco says.

So she does.


End file.
